Message-Id: <200008241754.MAA13001@darwin.sfbr.org>
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2000 12:55:51 -0500 (CDT)
From: Jeff Williams <jeffw AT darwin DOT sfbr DOT org>
Subject: OT: cvs, rcs, and diff
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com

From INSTALL for cvs-1.10:

    Unlike previous versions of CVS, you do not need to install RCS
    or GNU diff.  

Ok, I can understand that CVS might not want to require RCS, since CVS
itself is an alternative to RCS for version control.

But why provide your own `diff'?  Doesn't that go against the Unix
philosophy of having lots of basic utilities, each one doing its thing
extremely well, with close cooperation between programs?

What got me thinking about this was the discussion in section 5.9
of Kernighan and Pike, "The Unix Programming Environment", and their
elegant shell scripts `get' and `put' for revision control, which
make good use of `sed', `ed', `awk', `diff' and friends.

No flames, please; I'm just interested in hearing other opinions.
(Think of it as an essay question on your CS graduate entrance exam ;-)